Arguably, the most characteristic feature of XSLT is that it uses XML for serializing code text itself. As such, one can expect most benefit from XSLT which use

Arguably, the most characteristic feature of XSLT is that it uses XML for serializing code text itself. As such, one can expect most benefit from XSLT which uses lots of literal XML content embedded into XSLT. But that can be had with any general-purpose language having XML literals as well (such as JSX or old E4X). Other than that, XSLT still remains a competent markup processor, and XSLT 1.0 (but no later version) is indeed highly portable. Since DSSSL (precursor of XSLT) is based on Scheme, I've always wondered if some HNers will pick-up OpenJade as its reference implementation.